


Are we dancing after death, you and I?

by Rocket007



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Regeneration (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26858158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rocket007/pseuds/Rocket007
Summary: He first notices in New York sat on a staircase, his broken wife against his side (his fault). His hands cradle hers and it hurts to bring forth the gold, it hurts to push it away and into her but he has too. It’s the least he can do.The doctor misses his wife but only accidentally does something about it.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/River Song, The Doctor/River Song, Twelfth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	Are we dancing after death, you and I?

He first notices in New York sat on a staircase, his broken wife against his side (his fault). His hands cradle hers and it hurts to bring forth the gold, it hurts to push it away and into her but he has too. It’s the least he can do. Her energy that’s in his veins fogs over his mind and overwhelms his senses. It’s the taste of her in his mouth. She’s there with her hand in his but also there inside his mind, the tingle on his tongue is her, the golden fog like cotton in his head is her.

Then it’s her hand across his cheek and her voice that spits words like _stupid_ and _waste_ when it’s none of those things. When his mind is still swimming in her he takes a minute to blink at the devices in his hands before he registers they’re beeping and then they’re driving and finding Rory and-

His bowtie slips from his trembling fingers, Clara stands with a hand over her mouth, those big eyes filled with tears. Amelia’s hand on his cheek. This time the feel and taste and smell of her is all consuming, he feels like he inhaled a river, it burns up his nose and in his head and constricts his chest. It’s her unavoidably, all-consuming when he’s done such a good job of not thinking about her.

When he dreams, with a new face and tucked into a bed in Victorian London, he sees her. She’s sprawled across a picnic rug, camo pants and tight singlet and he remembers laying next to her. She turns her head and smiles, her eyes so incredibly bright, alive. Nothing in the universe could’ve stopped him kissing her then.

Later, much later, decades later, 24 years later, he takes her knife from their bedside table and runs the blade across his palm. The gold hardly hurts when it nits together his flesh almost instantly, but he doesn’t notice. Instead, his eyes are shut tight as he lifts his hand to his face and inhales her. It still tastes and feels and smells and is _her_ after so very long and not for the first time he wonders what that woman has done to him. She’s made him an addict, desperate for a fix. It’s not healthy he knows but after all these years she is still under his skin and he thinks maybe this is what it’s like to have a soulmate. Or to have had a soulmate.

Or maybe he’s just old and it fucking hurts.

“Are you okay?” Clara asks. He skips ahead, does three, four, countless Wednesdays with her in a row. Even changes his shirt to keep up the illusion, not for her, for himself.

“Just peachy.” He smiles, but not really, and whisks them away to run from monsters that aren’t in his head.

He can’t keep doing this. He’s starting to hate her. He runs and runs like he always does but he cannot escape because she is under his skin. Not on his heels but in them, in his every bone. He laughs at himself, cruel and too loud because he thought it’d been a gift. How stupid. He’s going insane. Every wound is healed with a tidal wave of her that drowns him in memories and love, guilt and grief, so much grief. He tries to stop the energy, control it and stamp it out but he can’t because there’s so much. The taste it leaves in his mouth is the same as if she’d kissed him and he wants to be sick. He wants to hate her. He convinces himself he does.

So he goes to Luna, to her house. Because as long as he hates her he can stand it, he can get inside that house and pack it all away and not throw up. Because it’s no matter that she’s damned him to a perpetual state of longing, forever remembering, his wife deserves what he’s never been able to give to anyone else; a burial.

He was wrong. Predictably so. As far as thinly veiled allusions go, never has there been a more pitiful attempt. All it takes is one look around her living room, a mug on the coffee table, fireplace burning and he’s on the edge of her sofa with his head in his hands.

“Doctor?” Intimately interwoven soulmates or no, his timing has always been and will always be, utter shite when it comes to them.

He keeps his eyes on the ground but there are tears on his cheeks and a tremble to his hands.

“What is it, what do you need?” Her hand is small and warm on his arm as she crouches before him, he hears her breath catch.

“Doctor whatever it is we’ll fix it, together yeah, we can get them back or rescue them or-”

He surges forward and kisses her. He shouldn’t because it will hurt, so so much, beyond measure and words when he has to walk away and never forget.

She kisses back but it’s off, no matter how he’d wanted to, he’s never forgotten the way his wife kisses. And now she is tense, frozen beneath him and he pulls back to watch her eyes flutter open, swarming with such emotion.

“River?”

“Sorry, it’s just been a while.” She says, a whisper, and understanding dawns like a lead weight. _Manhattan_.

“What is it, Doctor? What do you need?”

_You_. “Nothing, it’s-” He breaths out, “-it doesn’t matter.”

She looks at him the way he remembers, like she sees it all and he waits almost eagerly for her to call him out on the rubbish lie.

“Okay.” She nods, lets her hand fall away from his shoulder and he’s never felt quite so empty.

“Do you want some tea?” She asks, runs a hand through her curls and looks more lost than he’s ever seen her. Losing your family does that to a person, he should know. And he cannot force himself to leave, not when she’s so broken so clearly.

“I want you.” He says. This will break him, has broken him. But when he reaches for her, it’s with certainty that she will reach back and it kills him that he doesn’t know whether River has ever known that same certainty.

He watches her falter, so beautifully,

“Come here.” He’s never known this voice to be so gentle but it doesn’t surprise him. Not when the words, spoken like the most sacred of secrets, are for her.

And she does, without hesitation, let herself be pulled onto his lap and against his chest. It’s raw. Or maybe that’s just him and how he’d come to pack away the things she owned, past tense, and here he is now with his arms full of her, alive (but not truly).

He clings to her for hours and so does she.

“Goodbye Doctor.” Her whisper. He can’t force himself to speak, only nod.

And they run, her to the depths of her house and him to the Tardis. He braces his hands on the console, defeat written in the line of his shoulders.

The Tardis hums around him, prods at his mind, tries to tell him something.

“IT DOESN’T MATTER!”, His foot connects with the console. He cries.

Then, of course, it hits him.

He barrels back through those doors, finds her in the kitchen, grabs her by both wrists and holds tight enough to bruise when she tries to twist away from him. She’s been crying too and what a pair they make, tear stained cheeks, red eyes, runny noses, shaking hands.

“You weren’t surprised by the face.”

“I-“

“How did you know it was me?”

“Spoilers.” And he laughs through the tears because,

“I see you again, in the future, you’re in my future?”

“Yes.”

His turn to falter, to press his face into her neck and tremble in his wife’s embrace.

“When are you, Doctor?”

“I saw you on Durrillium, our 24 years?”

“Yes.”

“The library,” His voice breaks, “You’ve done the library?” He has never wished, longed, begged, urned, fucking ached for this three-letter word more in his endless life.

“Yes.”

He sobs into her neck.

“Oh honey, I’ve got you.” Her mind brushes against his and she shows him it’s true, images from her eyes, of the forest with pages for branches, words as leaves. The briefest flash of code but she pulls that back quickly, tucks it away.

“How did you get out?” His hands clutch her shirt in white fists.

“There’s no prison in the universe that can hold me, no matter how many pretty distractions it has.”

“But _how_ -”

“Spoilers. Now hush and get out of here.” She smiles for the first time, her eyes look lighter too. She said it’d been a while and time warps things, especially them, always them, and sometimes distance can mean thinly veiled illusions. He only hopes that he’s done even half as good a job at shattering them as she has for him.

“I don’t want to-”

“My past self, sweetie she needs you.” _Sweetie_ , his smile blooms so wide it feels awkward on this face and he dips his head into her neck to hide it from them both. He’ll be back, his older self will be back and he’ll never let her go again. Because she's alive. Truly. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ‘Dancing After Death’ by Matt Maeson
> 
> I hope you liked it, it's my first post on ao3 so let me know what you think, and feel free to come screech at me on Tumblr.


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